UK publishing is less accessible to Black authors now than it was five years ago, according to some of the biggest names in the industry.
The Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 led to many publishing houses making commitments to address the longstanding racial inequality in the industry. But, ahead of the Black British book festival (BBBF) this weekend, a number of Black literary figures say there has been a noticeable downward shift in the number of Black writers being published.
Selina Brown, who founded BBBF in 2021, said the number of Black authors being pitched to her has dropped dramatically in the last 18 months. She also believes the number of books being published by Black writers has “plummeted”.
“Some publishers were saying ‘we don’t have anything to give you’. Publishers are now seeing diverse authors as a ‘risk’, so Black and brown authors aren’t being taken on,” Brown said.
Other prominent voices within the British publishing industry – where only about 3% of the workforce are Black, according to figures from the Publishers Association (PA) – noted a surge in interest in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, then a subsequent dip.
Sharmaine Lovegrove, cultural strategist at Hachette UK, one of the country’s leading publishing houses, co-founded The Black Writers’ Guild and established Hachette’s Dialogue imprint, which focuses on books by, about and for marginalised communities. She said things are harder for new Black authors now than they were pre-2020.
“We didn’t think we couldn’t go so far so quickly, and go back to where we started,” said Lovegrove. “I think it’s harder because people will say ‘well, we tried’. When people say ‘we tried’ they’re reluctant to do that again and that’s heartbreaking.”
Lovegrove said the industry hasn’t been able to build new, diverse audiences and struggled to talk and cater to Black authors who were often labelled “difficult” for advocating for themselves.
She said: “The biggest mistake was seeing it as a trend as opposed to an opportunity to cultivate something meaningful that was missing.”
“It’s as if the industry is saying: ‘It’s all very difficult and these books haven’t done very well so we’re literally not going to try again with someone from the same background’,” she added. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
A report by PA found that “ethnic minority” representation across the industry fell from 17% to 15% in 2024, with a decline in the numbers of Asian and British Asian staff. The number of Black staff remained at about 3% during the same period.
There have been success stories. After selling more than a million copies of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge launched her Monument Books imprint at HarperCollins last year, with the specific goal of finding writers “who can help us understand our past, navigate our present and map new futures”.
Bristolian writer Moses McKenzie has won critical acclaim and awards. Other authors including Emma Dabiri, Yomi Adegoke, David Olusoga and Afua Hirsch have all had impressive sales figures and built international profiles.
The Black British book festival has also been expanding: it runs a community library in London and plans to open another this year; it has collaborated with Glastonbury festival; it launched a children’s book festival in Birmingham, which was headlined by Lenny Henry earlier this month, and has planned higher education courses.
But Brown says the impetus of 2020 has faded and new Black authors have often seen their books marketed the same way as other authors despite publishers speaking of wanting to “reach new audiences”.
“Marketing teams within publishing follow a process: they target white consumers,” she said. “They put all the books on a conveyor belt and it’s the same every time. It can’t work. You cannot have a one size fits all approach to every book.”
Lemara Lindsay-Prince, who was in charge at Stormzy’s Penguin Random House imprint #Merky Books before she left to set up her own literary studio for authors, said that convincing stakeholders across a publishing division’s sales and marketing teams was at times very challenging.
She said: “People always think it’s this editor, author, agent matrix that prohibits global majority voices getting published and that’s not always the case: it’s sales, marketing, publicity, international sales, and rights. It isn’t inclusive enough and because of that many people don’t see the value in a global majority voice.”
“When people tell me they want to be an editor, I say don’t – go work in sales,” she added. “That’s where the critical part of the conversation is happening. Editorial can have the vision but if the people who hold the purse strings don’t value Black and brown voices then you’re in trouble.”
Agencies such as Dark Matter, which focuses on linking publishers and authors with Black audiences, have had success recently but analysis by the Bookseller in 2023 found that the boom in Black authors being published after 2020 “failed to result in the promised broadening of publishing’s output”.
Brown said she established BBBF because there was an obvious gap in the market for a festival that catered to Black readers. Her instinct has been proven correct with successful events in Manchester, her home town of Birmingham and a sell-out last year at the Barbican in London where R&B star Eve headlined.
This year’s festival takes place at Manchester Central Library on 29 March. Its lineup, which features Kehinde Andrews, Kit de Waal, Jeffrey Boakye and DJ Paulette, is expected to bring in more than 2,500 people.
Brown says the industry needs to change how it measures success for diverse authors. “The fact that an author is sat on a panel in some conference and their influence is having an impact on people – that’s important,” she said. “Yes, the bottom line is financial but we need to have different benchmarks.”
